Method of manufacturing a thin poly, capacitor coupled contactless imager with high resolution and wide dynamic range

A method of fabricating a capacitor coupled contactless imager structure in a semiconductor substrate of p-type conductivity while simultaneously fabricating a metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) transistor structure in said semiconductor substrate, the method comprising:

• (a) forming first and second spaced-apart wells of n-type conductivity (n-wells) in the semiconductor substrate, the first and second n-wells having a region of isolation oxide formed therebetween, the first n-well forming the collector region of the imager structure;
• (b) forming a first mask that covers the second n-well;
• (c) forming a p-type region in the first n-well, the p-type region forming the base region of the imager structure;
• (d) after removing the first mask from the second n-well, forming a layer of gate oxide on the first n-well and on the second n-well;
• (e) forming a second mask that covers the second n-well and that covers a peripheral portion of the first n-well while leaving gate oxide formed on a central portion of the first n-well exposed;
• (f) removing the exposed gate oxide from the central portion of the first n-well;
• (g) after removing the second mask, forming a first polysilicon layer over a structure resulting from foregoing steps (a)-(g) and patterning the first polysilicon layer to form a polysilicon emitter contact region on the central portion of the first n-well and a polysilicon gate electrode on the gate oxide on the second n-well;
• (h) forming a silicon dioxide layer over the polysilicon emitter contact region and exposed surfaces of the first n-well and over the polysilicon gate electrode and exposed surfaces of the second n-well;
• (i) forming a second polysilicon layer over the structure resulting from foregoing steps (a)-(h) and patterning the second polysilicon layer to provide a polysilicon upper capacitor plate on the silicon dioxide layer over the first n-well, the polysilicon upper capacitor plate covering the entire base region of the imager structure.